Also called Sortes Virgilianae, Sortes Biblicae, fal-e Hafez, book oracle
Opening a respected book at random and taking the first passage your eye or finger lands on as an answer to your question.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Choose a book that will not hurt you if it lands on a dark passage, and treat the answer as a prompt for thought, not a command.
Romans consulted Virgil's Aeneid by random line, and the Historia Augusta says the young Hadrian drew a line foretelling his rise. During the English Civil War, Charles I at Oxford is said to have tried it on Lord Falkland's suggestion and drawn Dido's curse from Aeneid Book IV, later read as foretelling his fall.
Augustine says that, in a Milan garden, he heard a child chanting 'take up and read', opened Paul's letters and read the first passage he saw, Romans 13:13 to 14, and took it as the turning point of his conversion. Church councils later frowned on such sortes sanctorum, but the practice endured.
The Divan of the 14th-century poet Hafez of Shiraz is the most popular book oracle in the Persian-speaking world. The asker makes an intention, the book is opened at random and the ghazal found there is read as the answer, often among family on Yalda night, and street readers offer it beside his tomb in Shiraz.
Uses: Divan of Hafez
Drawing lots from verses is old. Romans used Homer and then Virgil, and the Historia Augusta, a 4th-century collection of imperial lives, has Hadrian consulting the Aeneid. Christians turned to the Bible, the sortes sanctorum, and although councils such as Agde in 506 condemned it, people kept opening Psalters and Gospels for guidance. The method needed only a respected book and was available to anyone who could read.
The best-known English story places Charles I in the Bodleian Library around 1642 to 1643, where a random Virgil line spoke of war and death; the details vary between tellers. In Iran the Divan of Hafez plays the same role and is still opened in homes and at his tomb. Encyclopaedia Iranica treats it as the leading Persian bibliomancy. Today the habit survives as a private, everyday practice.
Marking slips of wood with signs, scattering them on a white cloth and reading the ones you pick up. Built from Tacitus's account of Germanic lot-casting and modern rune practice.
Tossing three coins six times to build a hexagram from the Chinese Book of Changes, then reading its text as counsel on a situation.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
